


A Sort of Fairy Tale

by seimaisin



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-23
Updated: 2004-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-14 22:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seimaisin/pseuds/seimaisin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth's fantasies are far simpler than her reality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sort of Fairy Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Azar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azar/gifts).



Underneath it all, Elizabeth Weir considered herself a romantic soul. She believed that the universe was fully capable of providing fairy tale happy endings, just as long as the beings involved were enlightened enough. She believed in the overwhelming power of love to conquer all. After all, it sometimes seemed like nothing else worked.

In some ways, Atlantis played perfectly into her romantic leanings. Here she was, leading this spectacular city that, up until recently, existed only in legends and fairy tales. Standing out on the balcony, watching water flow by, illuminated by pink-tinged sunlight, she could allow her inner ten year old to surface for a few moments, and imagine herself a magical queen, peering into the beginning of a grand literary quest. The scientists could play the part of the royal mages (the fantasy threatened to dissolve, however, in a fit of giggles when she suddenly imagined McKay wearing a big pointy hat), and the military folks were the knights, brave and strong. Teyla was a knight, as well – she played to the archetype of mysterious stranger, coming to a culture to lead the worthy to new places. Casting herself as the queen sometimes seemed presumptuous, but really, what other part could she play? She stood in the throne (control) room and issued orders for the knights and the mages to follow, then stood back and watched the results. Maybe she sometimes wished for more active adventures, but that wasn't what she was there for.

But, that was all romance of a general sort. For romance of the specific variety, for Elizabeth at least, being on Atlantis was akin to being encased in a block of ice. She could again compare herself to the pristine queen, removed from her subjects, a figurehead to trot out in front of visiting dignitaries. She counted a few of her fellow travelers as friends, thank god, but for most of the staff, she was The Boss. No intimate relationships to be had there.

She missed Simon. She knew, in the back of her head, that chasing this romantic quest had probably killed any chance she had of sexual or romantic happiness. Never again would she drag herself home, after a particularly mind-numbing conference or meeting with stubborn dignitaries, curl up on the couch next to Simon and watch Addams Family reruns on Nick at Nite. Never would she wake up in the middle of the night and watch his breath rise and fall in his chest.

(She missed sex, too. She may have imagined herself as a fanciful ice queen, but in reality? Red-blooded woman, through and through. For all the good it did her now.)

To distract herself from thoughts of Simon – which came daily, hourly, sometimes by the minute, on a bad day – Elizabeth worked. She kept track of the confusion, listened to explanations about scientific wonders that went far over her head, absorbed the staccato humor that defined the military parts of her team. She inhaled the pieces of Atlantis, hoping, beyond hope, that if they became one whole, maybe she’d find herself thawed out, a part of everything.

~~~~

“I think you need to stop being so dedicated. You’re making the rest of us look bad.”

Elizabeth looked up from her papers – a personal journal entry she was writing, not that she’d ever let Sheppard know that. “I’m just finishing some things.”

“It’s late.” He stood in the doorway, leaning carelessly. The rakish knight in black. Sometimes, in her mythic fantasy, she tried to cast him as Han Solo, but he was far too much of a boy scout for that role. “Why are you still working?”

“Late is a relative term here,” she reminded him. “Our times are arbitrary.”

He made a face. “Details.”

She didn’t know why he was standing there. It was movie night in Atlantis, such as it was – a couple of folks had chosen DVDs as their personal items, so the team spent one night a week gathered in front of a video screen. She hoped they’d moved on to a different choice; as it was, she’d decided to maroon people on a deserted planet the next time someone quoted that stupid Adam Sandler movie at her. The worst offender stood before her now. (“What do you mean, you hate Happy Gilmore? Are you un-American?”) “What’s on the schedule this week?” she asked, shuffling her journal papers underneath another pile.

“Some weird independent thing. Half of it is in French subtitles. I bailed when the camera turned upside down.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I’m missing it.”

“The sad thing is, I think you’re serious about that.”

She tried to blink innocently, but ended up grinning. “John,” she began, as he continued to lean in her doorway, “did you want something?”

His face changed – was that hurt she saw? “I just thought you needed to get out of your office.”

~~~~

“You need to get out of your office more often.”

“Simon, I have an entire briefing to read …”

He’d pulled her out of the chair before she knew what was happening. “The brief will be there tomorrow. You don’t go back to work until Monday.”

“True, but …”

“But, nothing. We’re going for a drive.”

They’d had no destination – they drove for two hours, and finally stopped at an old-fashioned hole-in-the-wall diner on the side of the highway. They sat for another two hours, drinking bad coffee and discussing good literature and stupid dog stories.

Later that night, after a bout of wonderfully comfortable sex, she cocooned herself in his arms and stared out the window. The moon was just a sliver, as if someone had a glowing thumbnail hanging in the sky.

~~~~

John Sheppard was not Simon. That much was certain. Simon hated football, and most team sports, actually. If forced to pick a sporting event, he’d usually flip the television to a tennis event. Elizabeth used to tease him about a crush on Anna Kournikova – he retaliated by telling her he much preferred Lindsay Davenport. It was one of the things she loved about him.

John would openly ogle Anna. But, somehow, Elizabeth didn’t hold that against him.

She wasn’t sure when she started mentally comparing John to Simon. It bothered her. It was too soon – they’d only been on Atlantis a few months. She wasn’t the kind of woman who needed a man all the time. Hell, she’d gone four years without a relationship before Simon came into her life. Sure, she noticed attractive men, and even had sex with them every once in a while, but she was an entire person all on her own. She was, in fact, still an entire person here on Atlantis, without Simon. She just missed the person she used to be with Simon, sometimes.

She wasn’t sure what kind of a person she’d be with John. One thing she was sure of – it wasn’t a good idea to find out right now, not when she was still establishing her place on the station. The queen did not sleep with the dashing knight; look how well that worked out for Guinevere.

~~~~

He cajoled her out of the office, and into the back of Jumper One, to eat rationed meals and stretch out their legs. (She wondered why they were there, until he reminded her that the science team had taken over every available recreation area – except the movie room, of course – with some sort of weather project.) Elizabeth chose to sit on the floor, and leaned her head against one of the benches. “Why is it,” she wondered aloud, “that I feel like I haven’t stopped moving for days, but yet, I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything?”

John looked down at her, from his perch on the opposite bench. “What are you talking about?” He gestured broadly. “You did all this, that’s plenty to be tired over.”

“All what? Sometimes, I’m not sure if I do anything but stand around and pretend to make decisions.”

A frank admission, one John obviously wasn’t equipped to respond to. Simon would have come back with an entire list of tasks she did, reasons why she was valuable. Honestly … she appreciated the silence. She somehow felt less absurd about whining when he didn’t acknowledge she’d done it.

She watched him, stretched out on the bench, his lanky body gracelessly sprawled in the ship she knew he thought of as his own. He was sexy. She could admit that to herself – she was, again, a woman, and knew enough about herself and her species in general to recognize the signs of physical attraction. So, he pushed her buttons. She couldn’t figure out quite why and how, but he did.

John was younger than Simon – there she went, comparing again – but there was, she thought, a certain similarity, in facial structure and posture. In one of her many, many classes over the years, Elizabeth had learned that humans tended to be attracted to a certain physical type, even if that type wasn’t noticeable to the untrained eye. Some people latched onto eye color, some onto cheekbone structure, some onto the slope of a person’s shoulders. Usually, one could look at an entire group of people someone was attracted to, and pick out one trait they all shared. She thought she could pick out the similarities in Simon and John, but perhaps, she admitted, she was just rationalizing.

The ice queen did not thaw for the cocky hero. Fairy tales didn’t work like that. There was always some fiery princess, some brave peasant girl who turned out to be royalty. The queen was always removed from the situation; she either bestowed grand blessings on the couple, or plotted to keep them apart. She wasn’t allowed passion.

Simon could play the role of royal monarch. In a fantasy world, as she cast herself in the queen role, she had no trouble picturing him sitting in the throne at her side, passing benevolent judgment on a country full of adoring subjects. He knew how to take the middle road and make everyone else believe in his vision. Simon would make a good king.

John would destroy any country he was king of within a year. He’d be noble and just and brave, a warrior worthy of any story, but he’d never be impartial or political. He’d slay the dragon, when really, all anyone needed to do was give the dragon enough land to live alone.

~~~~

“So, we’re going out again tomorrow, huh?”

“Yes,” she responded, standing up. “Another day, another culture living in terror of the Wraith.”

“Don’t you just love our lives?”

“Sad thing is, I think you actually mean that.”

He laughed. When he stood next to her, she shifted from one foot to the other. Diplomatic training told her to look him in the eye. Woman’s intuition told her to keep her head down and run. She felt vulnerable. She missed Simon. She had no business thinking things about the man who was, for all intents and purposes, her second-in-command, just because she missed Simon.

Training won out over instinct, and she looked him in the eye. His eyes were friendly, a bit shadowy. More complicated than she expected them to be. Not for the first time, she reminded herself that her fictional fairy-tale world was a simplification of the highest order. She dealt with the complexities of culture all the time – it was in her blood.

John caught her off guard when he kissed her. Still, she reacted by grasping his shoulders and holding on. His mouth felt sharp against hers, with a day’s worth of stubble scratching her chin. He tasted wild. He tasted nothing like Simon. The realization nearly made her cry, but she hung on anyway.

Perhaps, Elizabeth thought, if fate had seen fit to throw her halfway across the universe, maybe it meant for her to change roles in her personal fairy-tale.

And, if not, what the hell, Guinivere certainly led an interesting life, didn’t she?


End file.
